This invention relates to improvements and refinements in nests used for trapping, domestication, husbandry and management of "Megachile Rotundata", commonly known as leaf cutter bees by persons involved in growing Lucerne "Alf Alfa" and like Leguminosae pasture for seed, and by other practicing pollination services using such bees, or the like, as pollinators.
It is an established fact that seed set is considerably increased in the aforesaid crops by the introduction of Megachile Rotundata bees for pollination when such crops are at a suitable blooming stage. In addition, these bees are able to increase their numbers from generation to generation.
Leaf cutter bees generally are solitary bees, but Megachile Rotundata are known to be gregarious and are not averse to living amongst their own kind with each female mating only once. She alone constructs cigar-like shaped cells inside blind tunnels, or preexisting holes of a suitable bore within which the ova for procreation are deposited. In this description, Megachile Rotundata, for simplicity, will be referred to as leaf cutter bees.
Research also indicates that by providing artificial or manmade tunnels, leaf cutter bees can be kept within a selected area to both pollinate and regenerate their kind during which activity one cell, including the depositing of ova, is completed at least once per day, inside the blind tunnels commencing at the furthest point from the opening and progressing along in sequence to the front of said tunnels, such cells being oriented end-to-end in a horizontal plain.
In order to recover the progeny and permit increasing bee numbers, it is necessary to retrieve from such tunnels each and every live cell, as well as to protect the livestock from infestation by pathogens and attack by pests and predators during nesting and during the active adult life cycle, which averages six weeks per adult.
Leaf cutter bees are entirely different bio-logically, physically and actively from the familiar honey bees which originate from a single fertilized queen whose progeny swarm and live in a hive, manufacturing from their own glands wax and honey from which they sustain their own kind and from which both products are recovered by the owner of such hive or hives.
Honey bees, "Apis mellifera", are equipped with substantial stingers and at times tend to aggressiveness, but the leaf cutter bee has no effective stingers and therefore no defense against predators or pests. They do not produce honey or wax.
The purpose of this invention is to provide a suitable number of tunnels within the minimum possible space. Since the discovery of man's ability to trap and domesticate along with managing this bee, a wide variety of artificial forms of nesting tunnels have been conceived. Approaches include: drilled wooden blocks with backing sheets, grooved boards which have been either bolted or clamped together to form blind tunnels, extruded tunnels in polystyrene-type materials, and also like materials with half-circle grooves again clamped together.
All of the aforesaid materials present problems for retrieval of the progeny. In addition, there is the problem of the considerable area required to provide, say five thousand, tunnels from solid materials. All of the heretofore approaches were costly to produce and supply to owners of bees.
In addition to the high cost and the design problems of tunnels, users were and are currently compelled to remove and recover the young manually or by additional machinery or equipment, and thence attempt to sterilize such nest materials to prevent residual pathogens from infesting next generation bees.
It has been proven from research and practice that such action is costly and inherently ineffective.
A completely waxed paper conglomerate of blind tunnels was developed in 1979, which development is the subject of Australian Patent No. 541,427, the named Inventor in which is Frederick Arthur Norman. It has been found and ascertained from further research that the nest is not effective and presents added restriction on recovery of the young as well as generating high temperatures in the solid materials because of the inability of air to reach and circulate around cells contained in the tunnels. This is the case because waxed tunnels do not permit natural moisture in leaf-clipping-formed cells to be absorbed by the tunnel material.